NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Using the Sun to Sterilize Water

Tanzanian villagers have begun using an energy-saving method to sterilise their drinking water - leaving the water under the sun. The piped water supply to Ndolela village in the central Iringa region is intermittent and even when it does flow, it is not clean enough to drink. When the pipes run dry, villagers get water from a dirty spring. Mother of five Rose Longwa says the new process has changed her life. We no longer suffer from stomach illness. That’s because the ...

Source

BBC Online (link opens in a new window)

Cambridge University’s Program for Industry launches a “Business and Poverty Program” in association

Cambridge University’s Program for Industry in association with the WBCSD and Oxfam has launched a Business and Poverty Program to examine the inter-relationship of business and poverty. The Program will bring together senior company managers, experienced practitioners, academic thinkers and NGO leaders. It aims to assist leaders from major organizations to develop an advanced understanding of how, through their mainstream commercial activities, businesses can improve the quality o...

Source

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (link opens in a new window)

Ring Up My Bill, Please

The promise of phones that double as digital wallets is not new. Consumers in many Asian and European countries have bought everything from convenience store trinkets to subway tickets using their mobile handsets for years. But the idea has largely been a gadget geek’s fantasy here in the United States. Only recently have American banks and wireless companies begun developing mobile payment products. Now, the next wave of technology could wash ashore within two years.

Source

The New York Times (link opens in a new window)

As Indian banks plan to march into rural India disbursing commercial loans and housing finance, they need insurance companies to keep in step in order to de-risk their borrowers and make their lending safer. The challenge and opportunity lies in moving to the bottom of the pyramid by providing flexible, affordable and easily available insurance to rural and semi-urban people, preferably through the involvement of state governments or through large companies (especially public sector undertaking...

Source

Indian Express

China looks at India for farm credit models

Venkatesan Vembu As China goes about its endeavour to build a ?new socialist countryside? and address the problems that poverty-stricken farmers face in accessing farm credit, it is looking to India?s successful microfinance model for inspiration. On Saturday, China?s leading?University tied up with HSBC to research and devise a microfinance model to serve the country?s farmers, many of whom do not have access to any form of credit. The three-year...

Source

DNA India (link opens in a new window)

Water Support Fading for Private Water Aid

For more than a decade, the idea that private companies would be able to bring water to the world’s poor has been a mantra of development policies promoted by international lending agencies and many governments. It has not happened. In the past decade, according to a private water suppliers’ trade group, private companies have managed to extend water service to just 10 million people, less than 1 percent of those who need it. Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to clea...

Source

International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

Twenty-two development goals for SAARC launched

By Nazrul Islam Bangladesh?s Foreign Minister, Mr. Morshed Khan has formally launched 22 development goals of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), aiming to regional poverty reduction in line with the UN millennium development goals to be reached by 2015. ?The leaders of South Asian countries are now committed to reduce poverty in a participatory manner, provide food security, guarantee livelihood, improve health care, ensure quality education and enhanc...

Source

New Kerala (link opens in a new window)

The impact of mobile phones.

In 1979 Elizabeth Blunt was sent to Nigeria by the BBC to cover the country’s elections, as the then military head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo, prepared to hand over to an elected civilian government. She recently returned to the country to revisit some of the people and places she had known all those years ago. I was back in Nigeria recently, and trying to find a woman called Dada who I had met on my first visit to the country, 27 years ago. I peered at my fad...

Source

BBC (link opens in a new window)